Other than a pile of legal fees, it's not clear that there will be any direct impact on Android and Google. Even if you assume Google loses all their appeals (a big if - the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court often don't see eye-to-eye on IP law), Google didn't lose on fair use - the jury deadlocked.
So the issue of fair use would need to be re-tried, and there's a good chance they'd win - the deadlocked jury was 9-3 in favor of Google. That may even be overstating Oracle's support. According to some reports, only one juror was a holdout for Oracle on the fair use question [1].
The problem isn't Google's, it's everyone else's. If this decision holds up on appeal, the legality of a compatible re-implementation of an existing API will often be a question of fair use that needs to go to a jury. Practically speaking, that means API re-implementation (a previously standard, commonly-used part of the interoperability toolbox) is dead for anyone who doesn't have the millions required to try this sort of case. I can't even begin to comprehend how that will change software development.
Obviously, non-copyrightability is the best possible outcome, because then such cases wouldn't even be worth bringing. But the opposite holding doesn't necessarily mean every such case has to go to a jury trial. If the facts are such that no possible jury could find in favor of one party, a fair use question may be disposed of on summary judgment: https://www.eff.org/document/opinion-granting-summary-judgme....
Getting a case to summary judgment isn't cheap, but the fair-use factors aren't super fact intensive: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors. They center around the nature of the work itself, which can be described in pleadings, rather than specific facts about the creative process that might require extensive discovery.
For now the case has been sent back to the district court for it to determine fair use questions. The API is now considered copyrightable but Google's use of it may fall under fair use. The district court needs to decide this. Whatever the outcome expect either side to appeal which means any practical significance may be years away.
The idea of an API being copyrightable is ridiculous. An API describes and interface between application code and system code. It describes the "shape" of the interface.
So now Oracle has an (effectively) infinite length patent (it's technically a copyright which at this point is eternal as long as Disney keeps lobbying) on the shape of the Java API. Perfect.
So the issue of fair use would need to be re-tried, and there's a good chance they'd win - the deadlocked jury was 9-3 in favor of Google. That may even be overstating Oracle's support. According to some reports, only one juror was a holdout for Oracle on the fair use question [1].
The problem isn't Google's, it's everyone else's. If this decision holds up on appeal, the legality of a compatible re-implementation of an existing API will often be a question of fair use that needs to go to a jury. Practically speaking, that means API re-implementation (a previously standard, commonly-used part of the interoperability toolbox) is dead for anyone who doesn't have the millions required to try this sort of case. I can't even begin to comprehend how that will change software development.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/24/net-us-oracle-goog...